Work Like Your Dog

Book excerpt: Having more fun at work isn't a fantasy. It's a smart and savvy strategy to becoming a more creative, productive, and dynamic employee. Work Like Your Dog is an inspiring call to "come out and play" at work. Dogs seem to have endless energy and tackle tasks with enviable enthusiasm, and Matt Weinstein and Luke Barber believe that most people could take a course from their ca-nines. By learning to play more at their jobs, workers can "lick" difficult challenges, take pleasure from tasks previously dreaded, reduce their levels of stress, and recharge their creative side. People spend more time working, thinking about work, and traveling to and from work than all other waking activities combined. Employees are asked to do more for less--making their work lives more exhausting and less satisfying. More hours are far from the answer; honing a sense of frolic and fun is. This book is a launching pad for fifty fun lessons about frolicking your way to success: Don't be afraid of being the fool. Be prepared to take risks; your new experiences may well lead to new contacts or new accounts and, if nothing else, will make you feel wonderful. Celebrate every success, not just your own but your coworker's new account, brilliant idea, or anniversary. You'll help release tension, underscore positives, and keep people aware of challenges conquered. Use humor to solve problems. Create a swearing room, where you and coworkers vent frustrations. Use a joke to diffuse verbal abuse from a customer. Humor can help you stay focused on the most important aspects of your job and prevent the worst aspects from getting the upper hand. Why choose stress? Almost every situation can provoke either stress or laughter. If you choose the highway of humor, your job will be more enjoyable and you'll work more effectively. And many more suggestions, stories, and ideas to unleash your playful professional and keep you from barking up the wrong tree. Weinstein and Barber's advice comes from seminar attendees and hundreds of corporate clients, such as American Express, IBM, Federal Express, and AT&T. This book shares the wisdom from these employees and from twenty-plus years of helping people enjoy their way to success.